ETTU Awards 2028 European U13 and U21 Championships to Władysławowo and Sarajevo

One October morning in Nha Trang, I reopened the notebook where I track the international competition calendar and saw two new names written into the 2028 column. Władysławowo, a small town on Poland's Baltic coast. Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The two places sit nearly 1,400 km apart, sharing nothing in the way of elite table tennis tradition. Yet according to an announcement from the Executive Board of the European Table Tennis Union (ETTU), Władysławowo will host the 2028 European Under-13 Table Tennis Championships, while Sarajevo takes the Under-21 European Championships the same year. "An abandoned stand still keeps its old applause" — that is what I always think when a youth event is handed to a city outside the map of prestige.

The decision came out of a meeting of the ETTU Executive Board, the highest governing body of continental table tennis. The announcement carried no detail on evaluation criteria, shortlisted candidates, or investment figures. There was one hard fact: the year 2028. No exact competition dates, no entry deadline, no information on the number of participating athletes.

Locking in a host two years ahead is not the habit of every federation. Many only reveal the host a few months out, forcing preparation into a sprint. ETTU goes the other way: it fixes the calendar early so member associations have room to manoeuvre. In table tennis, a youth event needs roughly 18 to 24 months to complete logistics, from competition-table standards and lighting systems to inviting international referees and arranging accommodation for hundreds of very young athletes.

The two chosen venues carry very different identities. Władysławowo is home to Cetniewo, Poland's long-established sports training centre, which has shaped generations of athletes. Choosing Cetniewo for the U13 event suggests something clear: this is an environment for nurturing. Sarajevo, with Arena Hills, is a different story — a table tennis nation still finding its footing in the Balkans. Bosnia and Herzegovina has never been a power in this sport, and hosting the U21 event means something else: a springboard for a small country to assert its presence.

2028 is also the year of the Los Angeles Olympics. Both European youth championships fall in the same year as the Games, creating no small scheduling pressure. As the world's news flow converges on the United States, a U13 event in Poland can easily slip out of sight.

Read purely through statistics, this announcement has nothing to analyse. No player is named, there is no ranking data, no head-to-head record, no playing style. A data writer would have to say it plainly: this is an administrative document. But precisely because of that, it opens another angle — the angle of the things that never appear on a scoreboard.

The most striking element is the two-tier age structure ETTU has placed side by side in the same year: U13 and U21. That arrangement is no accident. U13 is the earliest tier of talent identification, the age when grip, footwork, and the habits of the first three shots are formed. U21 is the transition tier toward the senior national team. Placing the two events in the same cycle shows ETTU is running a continuous development pipeline, from a twelve-year-old child to a twenty-year-old player. European table tennis, after decades of pressure from Asia, is choosing to build depth rather than chase the summit.

The distribution of venues also deserves a close read. Poland and Bosnia and Herzegovina are not European table tennis powers like Germany, Sweden, or France. Awarding hosting rights to these two countries, rather than concentrating them in traditional centres, reflects a decentralising logic. ETTU seems to want to trigger development in still-dim regions, turning each event into a push for local infrastructure and human resources.

On ranking points, this is almost a trough. Continental youth events generally bring little to the professional ranking. Their value lies elsewhere: they are a measure of each country's development system. How many athletes a federation sends to Sarajevo or Władysławowo, and how far they go, reflects reality more honestly than any medal table.

Asia, with China at its centre, does not need events like these to hold its position. Its selection system is already dense from provincial to national level, and a twelve-year-old is already on the radar of major training centres. Europe lacks that advantage. So each U13 or U21 event on this continent carries a different weight: it must do two jobs at once — find people, and build the habit of international competition in children who have never left their own borders.

From my experience covering regional youth events, the value of a decision like this is not in the competition week. It is in the two years of preparation beforehand. When a city knows it will host a continental championship in 2028, it starts renovating arenas, buying tables, training referees, and opening classes for children from 2026. The arena is only the end point of a long process. What happens during those two silent years is the most important part, and it almost never makes the news.

For Poland, the U13 event at Cetniewo may also serve as a showcase for the training-camp model. Cetniewo is where national teams from many sports come to train. Putting the U13 event there is a way of saying: this is where we want your children to begin. For Sarajevo, the U21 event is a chance for a young Balkan table tennis scene to step out of its narrow coverage zone.

What is interesting is that both events went to countries that have not often hosted major events in this discipline. For Poland, it continues an organising tradition it already has in other sports. For Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is almost a test. It will learn more from staging a continental championship than from winning a medal there. Organising experience, once acquired, stays with a city longer than any medal.

I hold no illusions about scale. A European U13 championship generates no broadcast revenue, does not lift equipment prices, does not produce million-dollar contracts. Its impact is small and local. But in sport, the small and the local are precisely the foundation. Asian table tennis grew strong through thousands of tables in schools, community halls, and neighbourhood clubs — not through a handful of stars. Since the day I wrote about the long-distance girl who finished seventh at Thống Nhất stadium, I have understood that a player's value does not lie in that day's placing.

Here I want to push back a little. There is an implicit assumption that awarding hosting rights means granting a development opportunity, and that the opportunity will automatically produce results. Reality is not that smooth.

The announcement says nothing about the criteria for choosing a host. The ETTU Executive Board decides, but does not publish the basis of its decision. A non-transparent process is hard to verify, and it is hard to know whether this is the result of a genuine bid or simply an internal allocation. For an organisation with ETTU's reputation, publishing evaluation criteria would help the community trust that hosting rights are not a political gift.

A small country like Bosnia and Herzegovina taking the U21 event means carrying a heavy preparation load: compliant arenas, a referee system, safe organisation. If resources do not keep pace, the risk is real. Not every hosting right turns into a success story. Some youth events are handed out and then staged in silence, leaving nothing behind but a few photographs.

Placing both youth events in an Olympic year also makes me wonder about the true objective. In a year when the whole world looks toward Los Angeles, how much attention will a U13 event in Poland receive? Perhaps ETTU reckons the event does not need a mass audience, only the right people. But if so, its promotional value is close to zero, and most of the credit will belong to the locality rather than to the event brand.

One more thing: an event awarded to a small city does not automatically become a memorable one. The reputation of a youth championship is decided by the quality of the athletes who appear, and at U13 level, no one can predict in advance who will shine. That is the nature of long-term investment: you put money and effort into something whose results appear only ten years later, if at all.

"Fans may not enter the arena, but the arena never lacks them." I believe that. But that belief only holds when someone actually opens the door. An administrative decision cannot open that door by itself.

What I take from this announcement lies in how Europeans treat the roots of the sport, not in two place names. They do not wait for a golden generation. They set the calendar, split the tiers, distribute the venues, and let time do the rest.

For Vietnamese table tennis, a specific question appears: are we scheduling our own U13 tier with the same patience, or still scrambling for one flashy player to call an achievement? The "lonely running trace" of each athlete only means something when behind it stands a whole system drawn up in advance. 2028 is still far away, but its work begins today.